by Gail Godwin
“Mother Finney.”
“Dick Tracy! And which student was she closest to in the class of 1934?”
“Well, that would be Agnes.”
“Right!”
“I still don’t see how I am—”
“Wait, let me finish! Wouldn’t it be the most natural thing in the world for you to seek out Mother Finney and have a little talk with her, say you want to know anything she can remember about your mother, and then after that you can tell her we’re trying to amplify the character of the foundress for this updated version of the play, and get her talking about that, and then you could say, ‘Oh, and you must have known Caroline DuPree, who died before she could realize her vocation—what was she like when she was at the school, Mother?’”
“But she must have wanted to be a nun at some point—I mean, her parents went to all that trouble to import the marble and hire the sculptor. I mean, it’s one of the legends of the school.”
“And who created the legend? That’s what we want to find out!” Tildy practically sizzled with electricity. “Was it there before Suzanne Ravenel’s play? Or how much of it did she invent?”
“But surely Mother Finney wouldn’t have stood by all those years and not spoken up if there was something not—”
“That’s what we have to find out,” said Tildy imperiously, turning her attention to Chloe’s scenery panel of the grotto. “Now, I would have colored the Red Nun in first, but you’ve done all the trees and left her white.”
“Well, this is the way I’m doing it. I have to see if there’s anything else I need to see about her after all the background is filled in.”
“I wasn’t criticizing, Miss Chloe. I was just saying I’m the impetuous child dying to scribble with her red crayon and you’re the subtle artist.”
“I think I’m going to use a high-gloss house paint on her,” said Chloe. In her backing-off moments, the articulate Tildy was impossible to resist. “That way she’ll stand out from the water-based paint on the trees. She’ll look more three-dimensional and solid. I was even wondering, should I make her a size bigger. What do you think?”
“You mean bigger than she really is?”
“Just a—a sort of impulse I had.”
“You know what?” Tildy marched back and forth in front of the panel. “I think that is an excellent idea. Make her larger than life. A force to be reckoned with.”
“But what if—what if I find out something from Mother Finney that will make her less of a force?”
“It won’t make a difference to the statue. She’s there, sitting on all her history of—just sitting there. She’ll be the same whatever loss of force Caroline’s story suffers.”
“But—shouldn’t we wait until we hear what Mother Finney has to say? There might not be anything.”
“Oh, there’ll always be something,” said Tildy, with a toss of her shaggy curls. “Everybody has their own version of everything. What I’m trying for is to expand the scope of this play, to break open Mother Ravenel’s same old party line. And Monday is St. Patrick’s Day, so you have a perfect excuse to seek out old Finney and wish her the luck o’ the Irish and then slip in the other stuff.”
Monday afternoon, March 17, 1952
Feast of St. Patrick, bishop and patron of Ireland
Mount St. Gabriel’s
In the morning sow your seed and at evening do not let your hands be idle; for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.
Mother Finney bent over her seedlings. The sun, soon tilting toward summer, blazed through the glass of the greenhouse and penetrated the layers of her serge habit, warming her old bones and smoothing the kinks in her joints.
Yesterday the pale sprouts had struggled to lift their tiny shoulders out of the flats. Today the trays of variegated foliage promised tomorrow’s harvest. Soon there would be clusters of ripening tomatoes, snap beans, peas, summer squash, cucumbers. In Ireland her family, thrifty though prosperous, had never forgotten the 1845 famine and grew their own seed potatoes; but here at Mount St. Gabriel’s, with a hundred boarders and the nuns and staff to feed, plus the cafeteria lunch for the day girls, it was more economical to buy them by the truckload from a New Jersey farm. Mother Finney’s garden was no longer really a necessity, not as in those first years of the school (when she had grown potatoes to bake, boil, and store) and again during the Depression years and World War II. But the sisters and students were so vociferous in their praise: a “Finney tomato” was “the way tomatoes used to taste,” a butterhead lettuce from her garden the crispiest and sweetest of them all. Doctoring her aches nightly with Ben-Gay cream and soaking her arthritic fingers twice daily in warm water, she submitted to their enthusiasm. She anticipated serving the first homegrown salad of the season to young Mother Malloy, who had trouble digesting the starchy Mount St. Gabriel’s fare.
Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. Even those who live many years should rejoice in them all. Yet let them remember that the days of darkness will be many.
She rejoiced in her accrued years, though as she looked back over them, it astonished her that she could have traveled so far and done so many things. And yet her life felt exactly hers: she could not imagine any other. Of course, she’d had her companion in holy daring for two-score of her fourscore and nine. It was twenty-two years and two months now, that Lizzie Wallingford had been gone.
She could also tote up days of darkness already lived through. Surely the author of Ecclesiastes knew that dark days weren’t always in the future: that they were given for you to endure and remember as you journeyed along, spreading them out, as it were, over your allotted span.
Her hearing was muted, her cataracts “ripe,” as reported by the eye doctor, but when you’ve walked the same halls and stairs and grounds for forty-two years, and heard the same Masses and prayed the same prayers, you can make do with less acute portions of sight and sound. In the night, she was either wakeful and alert, keeping God company, or visited by episodes from all over her life. They came tumbling in as they would, in dreams and in reveries, until she sometimes wished she could give them the slip and remember episodes and scenes from some other life besides her own.
Yet in daytime she was increasingly forgetful. She could not count on herself to look at a face and match it with a name, though she knew perfectly well who the person was. She could no longer pluck the precise word she needed out of the air at the precise moment she needed it. Even the names of vegetables she sometimes forgot.
Yesterday a woman had come looking for her here in the greenhouse. A sharp-faced, jet-haired girl from the very earliest years of the school, she was now the sharp-faced, jet-haired grandmother of that new little boarder who had been put back a grade. Such a lot of questions she had, this lady, whom Mother Finney remembered as being exactly the same as a girl, always plucking you for information, yet talking as she plucked. Pluck, pluck, cluck, cluck. She had asked Mother Finney if she remembered running up the tower stairs to save Caroline DuPree from throwing herself off, the day the DuPree parents came to remove her from the school. Everybody had talked about it. Mother Finney was a heroine.
Mother Finney said her memory was not what it had been, but she was sure there had been no heroics on her part.
Then the lady wanted to know when it was that Caroline DuPree had decided to become a nun. Was it before or after she was sent home?
Ah now, I really couldn’t say.
And what was this story about the Red Nun? That little girl who’s directing the play was all over me yesterday when Jiggsie brought her to tea at the inn. I had to tell her it was completely new to me, this devout Caroline DuPree who died before she could realize her vocation. Yet I understand there’s a memorial in red marble—
That there is, yes—an unfinished memorial, in the grotto. Would you like to see it?
The lady would love to, but was in too much of a hurry today; her driver was waiting, she was i
n complete charge of a magazine subscription business, very profitable, left to her by her late husband. Did Mother Finney remember how all the girls in the class of 1913 adored her? And off she had scurried, without waiting for an answer, still talking as she backed out of the greenhouse, because someone named poor Bob liked to get home before dark.
And here, this afternoon, came another visitor, a fawn of a girl with a clear-cut chin who made her way cautiously yet deliberately between the trestles of flats. Mother Finney knew exactly who she was but, alas, grasped in vain for a name. She remembered only the mother’s name: Agnes, Agnes Vick, then something else, then another name after that. Agnes, the special one, though you weren’t supposed to have favorites. Though Our Lord certainly did.
“It’s Chloe,” announced the girl, bless her. “You know, Agnes Vick’s daughter? I wanted—I wanted to wish you a happy St. Patrick’s Day, Mother.”
“Ah, Chloe. I was just now thinking of your mother.” Which was true, having seen Agnes’s face approaching in the girl’s steady eyes and distinctive chin. “Tell me, dear, how are you getting along?”
“Oh, I—” The girl swallowed and bent her head.
“I know, it’s hard,” she comforted the girl. “We know she’s with God, but it’s those of us left behind who feel the lack of her. I pray for her every day—and you along with her. And how are you finding the schoolwork, Chloe?”
“It’s going okay, I think. I mean, I have to study to make good grades, but my mother coached me in some subjects before I came to Mount St. Gabriel’s. And Mother Malloy, our teacher, is wonderful—she makes you want to excel.”
“She’s a godsend, our Mother Malloy. And you’ve made friends?”
“Well, Tildy Stratton and I are pretty close. I’m helping her a lot with the ninth-grade play. Our class is doing The Red Nun—Mother Ravenel appointed Tildy director. We’re adding some new scenes. The girls are allowed to do that.”
“And what scenes might you be adding, dear?”
“Well, we definitely want to amplify the character of our foundress. What she was really like, you know, in her prime. You’re the only one at Mount St. Gabriel’s who knew her then. Mother Ravenel talks about her a lot, but she only met Mother Wallingford at the end, when she was dying, and we have to remember that Mother Ravenel was only twelve at the time.”
“That is so,” said Mother Finney, pressing her lips together. With crooked but firm fingers she pinched suckers from a staked tomato plant. “Mother Wallingford wasn’t herself in those last days. She should be remembered for the many things she accomplished when she was well.” (The overwrought and completely imagined “deathbed scene” in Suzanne Ravenel’s school drama had remained an undiminished source of distress to Mother Finney, who had, since 1931, been obliged to watch several generations of girls “play” Elizabeth Wallingford and Fiona Finney.)
“Oh, what things, for instance, Mother? We’re looking for new material. We want to open up the play some. Even Mother Ravenel said it needed new blood.”
“You know, dear, after Mother Wallingford died, I wrote down everything I could remember. The Order kindly made it into a chapbook. You’ll find copies in the school library. At my keenest, Chloe, I was no writer, but you’ll find far more of Mother Wallingford in that account than I can tell you now. I’ve become so forgetful. Adventures with Our Foundress, it’s called. And it was. One adventure after another. Mother Wallingford believed in practicing what she called holy daring.”
“Oh, yes, Mother Ravenel’s always talking about that. And there’s this other thing we were wondering, too, Mother. What was the true story about Caroline DuPree? Was it like in Mother Ravenel’s play?”
The jet-haired old girl from yesterday and now young Chloe, interrogating her about Caroline DuPree.
Mother Finney was realizing belatedly that Agnes’s daughter had come to the greenhouse with a purpose other than to wish her a happy St. Patrick’s Day. So intent they were, these adolescent girls, about their upcoming play, which was, after all, only the latest rehash of an earlier adolescent girl’s play—a play that had overrun its course, in Mother Finney’s unasked-for opinion, and was best retired with all its misleading fabulations.
“Ah, child. I’ve become so very forgetful. She was a girl who died. And her parents commissioned the sculpture, which was never finished. And then Mother Ravenel, when she was only a girl herself, wrote the play. I’m afraid that is all I can tell you, dear.”
Chloe toed up a sagging white sock with the opposite loafer, trying not to show her disappointment. “Oh, well, we were just wondering.”
How Mother Wallingford would have loathed The Red Nun and all the wishful delusions that had gathered around the girl’s “legend,” thanks to a later girl’s play. And yet, it was Mother Wallingford herself who had given permission for that ton of marble to be unloaded right in front of Our Lady in the grotto. From the moment of delivery things had taken on a life of their own. Veronese red instead of the pale Carrara that had been ordered from Italy. Then the First War, the death of the funerary sculptor, followed by the death of both DuPree parents. “Rather an uncouth companion for our Della Robbia, isn’t she?” Mother Wallingford had soberly observed. “However, Mother Finney, let us stop and count our blessings.”
And as the two of them stood contemplating the unfinished memorial, the foundress ticked off the blessings on her fingers.
“Number one, God allowed her to remain unfinished, a reprieve beyond our wildest hopes. This hulk of marble is a much more bearable concession. As you know, I was prepared to endure a life-size Caroline DuPree, sculpted down to her finite particulars, complete with the Scholastica habit and rosary, in red—affronting Our Lady until these mountains crumbled, so that her parents could idealize a troubled daughter rather than punish the school. Number two, the parents are safely dead, and no one will commission another sculptor to complete the job. And number three, most important, no scandal from that girl’s unfortunate obsession with me has jeopardized all we have built here.” Here she gave a bitter, outraged laugh, and Mother Finney knew she was recalling the girl’s supreme infringement, the final straw. The lovelorn Caroline DuPree had sneaked into the nun’s dormitory, off-limits to students, and spent the night in Mother Wallingford’s closet. Or part of the night, until she gave herself away stifling a cough. She had come equipped to camp out in the recessive angle of the foundress’s L-shaped closet, which she had reconnoitered in a previous violation of the rules, when all the nuns were in chapel. In her knapsack she had stuffed a lap robe for warmth, a Mason jar and a washcloth should she need to relieve her bladder, and had even packed herself a nocturnal snack of a sandwich and juice.
“Why?” Mother Wallingford had demanded, having fastened her veil, thrown on her cape over her nightgown, and marched the girl downstairs to her own room.
“I wanted to be with you for one night, Mother,” came the sobbing plea. Then, cannily, a religious note was inserted. “Our Lord, He … nobody would stay awake and watch with Him. I wanted to show I could.”
“You are confusing things” was the icy reply. “You are a very confused girl, Caroline. Get into bed and do not leave your room until I send for you.”
“Not even to come to breakfast or go to the bathroom, Mother?”
“You have the contents of your knapsack to tide you over on both accounts.”
“Won’t you at least kiss me good night, Mother?”
“Certainly not.”
MOTHER FINNEY’S POCKET watch now said ten to three, allowing her to release Agnes’s little daughter from her unproductive visit to a forgetful old nun. “I must be on my way, Chloe, to ring the bell for None. Come and visit me again, and best of luck with your play.”
“I hope you’ll come see it, Mother.”
“Oh, I expect I’ll be there. And remember, I’ll be praying for your mother and for you too, dear.”
She stopped off at the kitchen to wash and soap her hands under the tap, drying
them on a fresh towel with the priestly care that precedes a sacred duty, and then set off, with her slight limp from a girlhood horse fall, down the trophy-lined hall to summon the nuns to midafternoon prayer.
WITH EACH STRONG peal of the bell, she sent up prayers for her dear departed Agnes and for Agnes’s slyer and more timid daughter. She prayed for all the girls, past and present, who, whether they had flourished or fallen or strayed, had partaken of Mount St. Gabriel’s root system.
She recognized the footfalls of her various sisters as they crossed the landing above the gated stairwell: the discreet swish of young Mother Malloy’s rubber-soled brogues; the flighty high step of Juilliard-trained Mother Lacy, humming a chant under her breath; the motivated tread of the headmistress, Mother Ravenel.
Suzanne.
“Tell me about the new girls, Mother Finney.” It was the beginning of the school year, 1929, and Mother Wallingford’s violent morning headaches had first sent her back to bed and at last driven her to make an appointment with the doctor.
“There’s a nice new boarder, from Charleston. Suzanne Ravenel. Holds herself straight as a switch. Not a whit of homesickness. Says the air agrees with her for the first time in her life and that she has never been so happy.”
“She told you that?”
“She’s at my table. A forthcoming girl, but quite respectful. She’ll do well with us, I think.”
“One wonders, though, what such a statement says about her home life.”
Then all of the apprehensive September, the blighted October. The nun’s doctor had sent Mother Wallingford straight to the neurosurgeon. There were tests at the hospital. The X-rays. The spinal tap. The needle biopsy. Consultation between specialists by long-distance telephone. Medicine to alleviate the pressure on the cerebellum. The bad news, wrapped in alleviative phrases: “maximal feasible removal,” meaning some of it might be cut out, giving the patient some extra time until it grew back. To take all of it would leave “unacceptable damage,” meaning the patient would be better off dead. The foundress was first stoic, then angry. She was only sixty-seven, there were many things to be done for the growth of the Order, for the improvement of the schools. She metamorphosed into a demon of efficiency. Lawyers were summoned, overseas calls booked, new documents drawn up, signed, and cosigned. Just in time. Her mind and personality deteriorated daily.